Don’t Panic: Embrace The New AdWords Experience

With this week’s announcement that the old AdWords experience will be retired by the end of 2018; if you haven’t fully embraced the new UI yet, now’s your time!

You wont be forced to make the switch over the busy sales periods of November and December thankfully, but this good news does mean there could be as little as 6 months left!

The new AdWords experience is more profound than just a new look. Tools have been moved, names have been changed and new features added, creating a whole new way of working.

Such change can be challenging, especially if you’ve had years to develop muscle memory relating to the old experience! Perhaps you’ve briefly tried the new experience, but became frustrated when tasks you could once complete with your eyes closed turned into lengthy hunts through menus and tabs. Maybe you’ve been hoping that a full roll out would never come!

However you feel about the new experience, don’t panic. There’s time for you to become familiar with the new AdWords experience, there might even be time to learn to love it. There’s so much to gain, what are you waiting for!

Even if you’re not ready to take the plunge into the new interface just yet, why not explore the new features, get familiar with how the interface looks, and what it can offer you? The Overview tab is a great place to start if you’re keen to look but are hesitant to touch.

Overview is a welcome replacement to the Home tab in the old experience. Say goodbye to uninspiring tables of numbers and hello to gloriously colourful data visualisation!

Review at-a-glance auction insights, explore your most common search terms and swiftly analyse activity patterns with the Day and Hour card, all within the Overview tab.

My personal highlight is the Biggest Changes card. This instantly highlights movement in key metrics such as Clicks, Conversions, Cost Per Conversion or Conversion Value, without needing to compare date ranges and metrics manually.

Overview cards are available at account, campaign type (Search, Display, Shopping or Video), individual campaign, and ad group levels, so there’s plenty of easily accessible data to get lost in.

Ready to take action? Let’s dip a toe into some exclusive new AdWords experience features.

Promotion Extensions

If sales are your main advertising goal then Promotion Extensions are a must-have for your PPC tool kit.

Show special offers alongside your adverts, whether you’re offering a monetary discount, or a percentage off. Customise the extension with options for language, currency, and set requirements like offer codes or “on orders over” text.

Got a Father’s Day sale coming up? Perfect! Promotion Extensions also allow you to add a bold label next to your offer, showing the occasion.

They can be added at account, campaign or ad group level, so you’re free to promote your entire stock, specific lines or even individual items.

Promotion Extension Set Up

Mobile Promotion Extension

Desktop Promotion Extension

Showcase Shopping Ads

Hit browsers high in the purchase funnel with a brand new ad format exclusive to the new AdWords experience: Showcase Shopping Ads.

This ad format lets you group together related products from your inventory to introduce your brand to potential customers searching for broad terms, such as wedding dresses or garden furniture.

Within search results the Showcase ad shows a main header image, your company name or website and smaller product images. A click on the showcase expands the ad unit, showing further details about your brand and your selected related products.

You’re charged on an engagement basis, so expansions of the ad unit don’t necessarily incur a cost. Charges are only applied if a potential customer spends 10 seconds or longer within your ad, or clicks on one of the products within that time.

Showcase Shopping Ad Format

Thirsty for more? Once you’re familiar with how the new AdWords experience looks, and have experimented with a few of the exclusive features, it’s time to take things to the next level and really get stuck into the day-to-day tasks.

If you want to throw yourself in the deep end, make the switch to the new experience and don’t look back. You’ll be surprised at how quickly your speed improves once you commit to the new look!

If you’d prefer a gradual approach, you can switch between the two experiences at any time. Just hit the cog wheel from the old experience, or the spanner in the new to make the switch.

Whether you’re comfortable in the new experience, or still need some practice, have a go at using keyboard shortcuts to get you where you need to go instantly.

My top pick is the search for a page shortcut – just a tap of the G key, followed by a T. Start typing to see a list of pages you might be referring to. If these pages have shortcuts of their own they’ll be shown next to the page name, something to keep in mind for next time you want to navigate there!

Find the full list of shortcuts below, or pull up the list within the new AdWords experience with the question mark.

New AdWords Experience Keyboard Shortcuts

Change takes time to get used to, so don’t leave it until the last minute to make the switch to the new AdWords experience. There’s a lot to explore and some great features to try out, so take the plunge!

More posts in this category

Mobile Site Speed To start, site speed is known to be the average time taken for a sample of several pages on a website to load. Individually, these pages each have their own page speed. As a whole, and individually, you’d want these to be as low as possible, while providing high quality content and…

Price Extensions have been around for a while, more precisely July 2016, as a mobile only format. In March 2017, Google rolled out Price Extensions for Desktop, however, the extension is some distance away from being embraced by all PPC managers. The goal for this extension is to highlight business products or categories in detail,…

Here at ConversionWorks, we like to keep one eye open for updates and changes in the Biddable landscape. On Wednesday 23rd May we noticed something that you might want to keep an eye out for. Given its potential impact on your campaign performance, being a biddable whiz like us, you’ll want to know. A Brief…